The Nighttime is for Dreaming
by Quinndolynn
Summary: Post 7.1 ficlet for Ziva's dreams. A smidge of Tiva. Has now grown into actual completed fic of angst and nightmares and more than a smidge
1. The Nighttime is for Dreaming

Title: The Nighttime is for Dreaming

Warnings: Angst. TIVA angst. Cliches.

Summary: The nightmares come.

Disclaimer: Not mine, not ever. I thought I was done with this but a plot bunny bit me at work today, so… This is for people who like me are going to have to wait and find the second ep online tonight after it airs. Cheers!

The nightmares come the first night in the hospital in D.C. where Ducky has insisted she stay the night for observation. Exhaustion and infection and transcontinental flights, he said, and Gibbs looked stern when she tried to protest. Abby comes with her and plumps her pillows, and insists she eat the awful food on her awful tray, and when she thinks Ziva is busy staring down the pudding, she draws the nurses into the corner to warn them about how deadly their patient is, so they should be extra nice to her.

The nightmares find her in the nondescript hospital bed, not Navy, because she's not NCIS anymore, and they turn the clean concrete walls into dank concrete walls, and they turn the blinking lights to eye-smarting beams of desert sun leaking through cracks, and Salim comes and backhands her across the face and her mouth fills up with blood.

In the morning the nurses, with the appropriate amount of respect in their eyes, examine her wounds, change a few dressings, remark on the new bruises coming only now to the surface. One new bruise is on her lip and it's shaped like teeth holding back a scream. Ziva keeps her mouth shuts and nods and after they leave she turns to her side and spits out blood.

The nightmares come the second night in her hotel. She's checked into a long-term suite, a living room and kitchenette and a separate bedroom, because she doesn't know how long she'll be here or anywhere. McGee and Ducky come with supplies, McGee with a cellphone and a refurbished laptop so she can make calls and catch up with the world outside, and Ducky with some casseroles and special Ducky-ordered medical supplies, icepacks to store in the fridge and creams to prevent scarring. They settle her in, brief her on what's changed in the agency, highlight the cases that have come across their desks, say too many times and too awkwardly, that they are glad to have her back. McGee's bruises look like stains that have been washed enough time they're fading and his nose is peeling.

The nightmares find her in her nondescript hotel bed, flowered coverlet, tight-tucked sheets. They make the TV scream obscenities in Arabic, they lash her wrists with knots of crumpled bedclothes, and Salim comes and leans over her and makes her want to betray both her countries and his breath smells like Abby and home. In the dark she grabs the hem of the t-shirt she's wearing, an old one of Abby's with a strawberry-colored stain, and she throws it far away from her. The nightmares continue, but she can't smell him anymore.

In the morning she burns the t-shirt in the sink and sets off the fire alarm, and has to hurry and blacken toast before she evacuates the building so she has an excuse. The hotel still doesn't like it and they ask her to leave as soon as she can.

The nightmares come the third night, and they reopen each of her old wounds, one at a time, and they paint the walls in colors of thirst and they speak to her in voices that sound like her father's disappointment.

On the fourth night, Tony finds her in his nondescript bed, burrowed under the covers, fists tight on his pillow. He lowers the weapon he pulled when he saw his front door ajar, because as he suspected, there's a crazy ex-Mossad person in his apartment, but it's his crazy ex-Mossad person, so it's fine.

"Hey there," he says. "Whatcha doing?"

"I'm homeless," Ziva says. "And the hotel did not appreciate it when I had to burn something."

Tony blinks a little, but he sets his gun down on the bedside table, and toes off his shoes, and climbs into bed with his traumatized ex-Mossad person.

"Glad you're here," Tony says, settling back on the headboard. "I've been having trouble sleeping."


	2. The Morning is for Leaving

Title: The Morning is for Leaving

Warnings: Lack of resolution. Vagueness. Desecrated newspapers.

Summary: Other people come.

Disclaimer: I do not own this. I should not even be writing fic. I have exams to study for and paper proposals to write. Everything I've written is a one-shot anyway! In other news, here is a second chapter. (And then I'm quitting cold turkey.)

Ziva's at the breakfast table, putting careful spoonfuls of cereal between bruised lips. Tony's in the shower, and either his usual visitors don't stick around long enough in the mornings to let him know his voice carries through the pipes, or he actually thinks his singing voice is good.

She's not as curious about the reason for the vocal display as she is about his choice of material. The goat song? Really?

Ziva finishes up her cereal, scraping the bowl because she's been away long enough to savor even stale and soggy cornflakes. She's also been back long enough to not drink the dregs of milk in her bowl, but the thought crosses her mind, and it will for a while, so long as she remembers thirst raking her throat and squeezing the back of her head.

The shower shuts off, and Ziva thinks about how a shower is a thing she will appreciate long after the novelty of cereal and cold milk passes, as she rinses out her bowl. She goes ahead and washes her dishes and she's wiping down the counter when there's a knock at the door.

Wiping her hands on her jeans, she goes quietly into the hall, shutting the door to Tony's bedroom on the way. She puts an eye to the keyhole, standing away and leaning in so her feet won't cast shadows in the crack under the door. Satisfied that it's who she expects, Ziva flips the bolt and opens the door.

It's Gibbs. Coffee in hand, glint in his eye. Ziva doesn't say anything but she pushes the door open wider and lets him walk past her. He goes unerringly to the kitchen, sits in the chair she just vacated, picks up the paper she's dissected into various sections and pages.

A bit of musical nonsense Yiddish comes from the room down the hall, then Tony appears behind her, mostly dressed for work, with a towel over his shoulder.

"Did I hear – oh." He stops next to her in the doorway. "Hey, boss."

Gibbs grunts.

Ziva gives Tony an extremely dirty look as he edges past her into the kitchen. He opens the fridge, snags a bag of bagels, drops one in front of Gibbs, as the toaster warms up.

Ziva can't take it. "I can't believe you told him I was here," she hisses at Tony, as he scrubs his still damp hair with the towel, and pours juice. He looks up confused.

"I –"

"He didn't." Gibbs finally speaks as well. "I went to the hotel. They told me you'd checked out yesterday. I came here."

"Yeah, Ziva," Tony says, scowling at her a little as he brushes past her to return the juice to the fridge. "Where's the trust?" He's only half-joking.

"Sit down DiNozzo."

"Yes, boss." Tony parks it across from their team leader. Ziva gives in and sits between them. Gibbs munches on his bagel and sips his coffee and reads the sports section. Tony eats his bagel and drinks his juice and bobs his head around trying to read the back of whatever page Gibbs is holding up. Ziva wants to shove the comics in front of his face, but whatever, she's trying to respect him more now. Trust, she tells herself. Trust.

This is definitely the weirdest morning-after she's ever had, even counting the ones where she actually had sex the night before.

"So," Gibbs says, putting down the paper, and his placing his coffee cup on top of it so Tony won't take it. "You're moving out."

Ziva's forehead grows three lines of confusion. "I hadn't moved in."

"Good. Because if you're back on my team, then you can't also be back…here."

She's back on his team. If she's back on his team. If?

"I'm coming back?" she asks.

"She's coming back?" Tony asks at the same time, and his question is the higher pitched of the two.

"If she does PT for two weeks first and agrees to weekly consults with psych until they say otherwise." Gibbs answers Tony's question, but she knows he's waiting for her response. Third-person doesn't make it sound more appealing, but she'll pay whatever price he asks. She owes him this. She owes him more than she can ever repay.

"I agree."

"Okay then." Gibbs pushes back from the table. "You're first appointment is today at two. Should leave you plenty of time for apartment hunting." He picks up the sports section. "Mind if I take this?"

"Go right ahead," Tony says, smiling tightly, but Gibbs is already out the door. Tony locks eyes with Ziva for a long moment, and then the thud of the front door closing snaps them out of it. Ziva startles at the sound more than she should, and then she gets to her feet and starts clearing dishes to avoid looking at his face.

"Not that I did, but if I had told Gibbs you were here, would you really have been angry?" Tony asks the question casually but the curiosity is there. Ziva pauses mid sponge swipe. "Because, and this isn't a worried thing or anything, but we're all going to want to know where you are for a while."

"I know," Ziva says, back towards him. "I'm sorry I snapped at you. I just didn't want him to see me like I was, when I came, I thought…"

"I know," Tony says, and wonders if it's a good or bad thing that she'll hide her crap from Gibbs, but not from him. "I figured if you were here you were safe. You do something crazy though and I will rat you out."

Ziva rolls her eyes at this and starts rinsing the plates.

""Leave 'em," Tony orders, slumping a little in his chair and stretching his neck. "Hey, so, welcome back?"

Ziva shuts off the water and turns to lean against the counter. "Thank you," she says, serious and smiling. "It's good to be back."

"Okay then," Tony says, like he's trying to have a little of Gibb's cool. "So, it's all good." He still sounds a little worried. She knows he's thinking of last night, how she trembled and quaked next to him, and how each time he shook her awake and told her where she was and that it was okay to go back to sleep, because he was there.

Maybe it stuck. Maybe exhaustion won out. Either way, she's had a better night's sleep here than anywhere else for many months.

Of course, Tony's got circles of his own under his eyes now. His bruises aren't as healed as McGee's.

They're stretching into another staring contest now, and there won't be a door slam to snap them out of it. Ziva loses, because she blinks first. Actually, she circles the table, leans down and kisses his cheek. She indulges herself by pausing for a moment in his comforting bubble of warmth and soap smell. "I will be okay on my own," she reassures him softly. "I just needed something…familiar."

"Well then," Tony says, eyes crinkling in a way that's quite Gibbs-like. "I'm always here if you want to get…familiar."

Trust and respect, Ziva thinks to herself. Trust and respect probably excludes head-slaps. She settles for rolling her eyes again and taking his classifieds section. She does let him walk her to the door.

She hugs him swift and tight before she leaves. "Thank you," she whispers again in his ear, fast and soft. "I'm glad to be back here."

((There will be a third and final chapter, but I can't promise any more satisfactory of an ending. Thanks for reading!))


	3. The Afternoon's for SecondGuessing

Title: The Afternoon's for Second-Guessing

Warnings: More clichés. Too-convenient housing.

Summary: Healing, hopefully.

Disclaimer: The words are mine, but most of the stuff behind them belongs to others. New episodes (so, tomorrow) are my personal post-by deadlines, otherwise I'd still be tinkering with this!

**The Afternoon's for Second-Guessing**

Ziva's new apartment is exorbitantly priced, but it comes mostly furnished, with necessities like a shower curtain and a double bed. Not too far from the metro, which is good, because the rental car doesn't accelerate nearly as fast as she likes, and driving to Navy Yard would just frustrate her every morning. Coming back on duty frustrated probably isn't the way to go.

Ziva puts her bag down on the little Ikea table in the kitchen and drops her key and a spare on the counter. It'll do, she thinks, no time to revel in claimed space. She has time for a quick but glorious shower and a change of clothes from her meager supply before she's out her new front door to meet the shrink.

The rattle and sway of the metro is pronounced in the emptied mid-afternoon, without a rush hour crush of people. Ziva watches her multi-hued reflection in the glass and ignores the stares of tourists who are wondering to themselves why she doesn't just leave a man who treats her like that. She touches her bruised cheek absently as the doors ding open and thinks about how the man who did this to her bled out from a hole through his head on a dusty floor in Somalia. Gibbs did that. Gibbs and Tony and McGee came to rescue her, so she owes it to them to give this a shot.

It is harder than she thought it would be.

Ziva is polite. Ziva is impatient. Ziva does not talk about her feelings.

Except with Tony or Gibbs, or Abby, or Ducky, a small internal voice says, so Ziva revises that to, does not talk about feelings to _strangers_.

Ziva does confess to having nightmares and tries to be neither disappointed nor relieved when the shrink says if they persist they can talk about sleep aids, but for now she should give it time.

Ziva's had a lot of time on her hands of late. She's more than a little sick of it.

She stops and sees Abby before she leaves. The team's out pursuing a lead, and the lab hums with tests just finishing up. She survives the obligatory celebratory assault to the senses, but she turns down Abby's invitation to dinner and girl-talk and coddling.

In the late afternoon she goes shopping, makes soup, freezes the leftovers, make up the double bed with new bland linens. The normalcy of it knocks her sideways once or twice, but she gets her footing back easily enough. She goes for a slow run around the neighborhood, checking out the places someone can put surveillance on her new apartment, and where she can get takeout when she doesn't feel like cooking.

Evening falls in slow motion, sunlight sliding down her new walls and lingering on the floor as if the day is equally reluctant to go to bed. Ziva sympathizes. She wants it to be morning, to skip these intervening hours. Her body is worn out from doing little, and she'll have to build her stamina up a lot more if she's coming back on duty, but her mind flips ceaselessly back and forth through things said at the breakfast table and things said in the psych office. Still, the hour's grown late, and she out of chores, so she showers, slowly and with great relish, applies Ducky's creams to her skin and scars, and changes into an old buckeye t-shirt with a coffee stain on one side.

Lying in bed, nightmares don't find her but sleep doesn't either. She ticks off more mundane activities she has to do (_set up bank account, buy new knives_) so she doesn't have to think about the real work ahead (_prove oneself, confront father_). If she were honest with herself she might admit that some things on her to do list are nightmares in themselves, but she's too preoccupied with trying to lose to the ceiling in a staring contest.

Three hundred blinks and still in the game, there's a knock at the door.

She rolls silently out of bed, checks through the bedroom blinds to make sure the vacant apartment across the street is still empty. In the hallway she puts an eye to the peephole in the dark so she doesn't have to worry about shadows giving her away. The precautions feel like an exercise in formality though, since she knows who's there long before she opens the door for him.

Tony balances a fragrant THANKYOUTHANKYOU bag in one hand, rental DVDs in the other.

"You weren't going to bed already, were you?" he asks, and then without waiting for an answer, "I brought food. You've got some great takeout places near here." She doesn't say anything but she smiles and pushes the door open wider so he can come in.

He sets down his burdens on her tiny Ikea table, not so subtly looking around to see what kind of place she's found.

"Did Gibbs tell you where to find me?" Ziva asks, poking cautiously at the bag.

"Abby," he corrects her. "She said you bailed on bonding time. I can't really blame you for that, I saw the confetti aftermath, and you know she hasn't got it all out of her system yet. But I was sure you'd be up for a quiet evening in."

He doesn't quite say it like a question but he still looks to her for confirmation.

Ziva pretends to consider it. "If I get to have your fortune cookies," she declares, and Tony breaks out in grins.

"You drive a hard bargain, David," he says, "But your continued education is worth the price."

"My education?" Ziva echoes, punctuating the query with the snap of a cookie yielding up its lotto numbers.

"Are you aware," the senior field agent asks her seriously, "of how many great summer releases you missed out on?"

She isn't. He's brought his laptop to watch them on, even though he laments the fact that the small screen won't do justice to J.J. Abram's vision.

It is easy and real. He shares his fried noodles and some of his chicken, and yes, she will definitely go there when she doesn't want to cook. She promises not to threaten the shrink with bodily injury. She doesn't give him her extra key, but saves it, for Gibbs or Abby. She does agree to consider blu-ray when she goes out to replace her TV though.

Mostly she doesn't ask him to stay and tell her that it's safe to sleep, and she doesn't take him up on it when he offers.

Before he leaves, he tugs her into a quick embrace, and she relents. They both allow themselves this chance to confirm the other's presence. He lightly touches her bruised cheek, and she thinks of how the man who did that tied him to a chair and beat him for having the audacity to come and rescue her. She thinks of how much she owes to him and Gibbs, to McGee and Abby, to too many people.

She owes it to all of them to give this a shot. This second chance to do good in the world, to fight evil, to love people.

Maybe she owes herself something as well. Not now, not yet. She's no longer homeless, and she doesn't drink the milk from her cereal bowl, but she knows there will be times when nightmares find her in the bland pre-furnished bed.

Not never, just not yet.

So they stand together in her new doorway, and each thinks of afternoons to come.

"Welcome home, Ziva," Tony whispers in her ear as he lets her go.

Ziva blinks against the brightness in her eyes, buoyant tears, like the kind that form from staring into bright sunshine, and thinks to herself how very glad she is to be back here.

((I went so back and forth on how schmoopy to make the ending, so hopefully it's not too fluffy. I'm really trying for the more restrained version of resolution that we'll probably get in the show, at least for now. Thanks so much for reading, and reviewing, and alerting, and everything!))


End file.
